Read Ode to Lata for Free Online Page B

it.  Not in the mood.
    It should have been quite simple.  People changed their minds all the time.  It’s their prerogative.  So one took a rain check, stifled his disappointment and tried to articulate an understanding, “Oh, no problem, Richard.  I was feeling a little pooped myself.  I’m disappointed but we can do it next week.  No big deal… .”
    But not for me.  For me, it suddenly became a matter of life and death.  I was a starved refugee who had been promised a banquet, even permitted to smell the redolence as it cooked, only to discover a change of heart had tossed everything into a dumpcart.  All I could see then was his face and think the unacceptable – that I almost had him there within my reach, and then I didn’t.
    How could Richard be expected to understand my ceremonies for that evening?  To understand that every time I’d felt dismayed with life, I had shaken the bleakness off with the promise of our evening together.  The reverie of him next to me and smelling him and feeling his touch sustained me as my fingers mechanically punched away to open a savings account for someone.  God, just listening to his laugh….That full-bodied, robust laugh like he could grasp life and just swallow it whole.  How can he have known such longing?
    “Listen,” he said, without even a hint of remorse. “I have to do something else.  I have to go and see this guy.”
    “What guy?”
    “Oh, just some guy, you don’t know him, okay?”
    “Well, tell me about him!  Who is he?”
    “What difference does it make?”
    “Just tell me,” I pleaded, as if knowledge of the lucky person would assuage my own misfortune.  “I want to know.”
    “His name is Louis, okay?  Happy?  Now can I get off the phone?”
    It crushed me to think that our time together meant so little to him and my very salvation.  Oh, the horrible things I wanted to do when I thought of where he would be going and what he would he would be doing.  From meat cleavers above his cock to razors upon my wrist.
    I’ve been told that two people can never love each other the same amount, at the same time.  Often when one’s suffering ends, the other person’s begins.  Problem was that not only could I not imagine Richard suffering for me, I didn’t think he was even capable of it. 
    I would have done anything for him to keep his promise, to make him change his mind, and God knows, I tried.  At first, I made bargains that were impossible to keep. 
Please, Richard, just this time, don’t cancel on me.  We don’t have to see a movie again for as long as you wish.  But just this time… I just need to see you so badly this time…
When that didn’t work, I tried to cajole him with humor, to remind him of how witty and funny I could be.  I then shifted to emotional blackmail by recalling his promise.  And finally, stripped of any dignity, I capitulated to the most basic of human techniques – crying.  None of it made any difference.
    Instead Richard told me he needed to get off the phone because now he definitely didn’t feel like being around me in this desperate and needy state.  So I began to pray, as I have night after night, for a boon. Bent down on my knees, I looked up at the framed picture of our Imam – who among many things had inspired my mother’s choice of doctors – and with teary eyes I bargained petulantly with his spiritual worth.
    Why would you deny me this? What’s wrong with wanting Richard?  That, after all, isn’t materialistic.  It’s not like I’m praying for a car or money or anything.  All I want is for Richard to love me back.  For him to want me.  How can you just stand there in that damn picture, smiling down at me, and do nothing to answer my prayers?  Give him to me!  You must give him to me!
    It didn’t occur to me then that I’d performed this little scene more than once in my life.  At about thirteen, I had stood unshakable by a
taqat
, a coin depository in the mosque